


The Lugubrious Client

by gardnerhill



Series: The Vermilion Problem [16]
Category: ACD Holmes (“Vermilion Problem” Vampire AU series)
Genre: Here there be monsters.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27203666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: How do you save someone who doesn’t want to be saved?
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Series: The Vermilion Problem [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/283167
Comments: 14
Kudos: 19
Collections: Spook Me Ficathon





	The Lugubrious Client

**Author's Note:**

> For the LJ Comm Spook Me October 2020 Halloween Ficathon.

_The cobbles glistened in the small alley. The cloaked man looked down on the young woman in his arms, but the reflection in the dark-puddled street showed only her figure and not his._

_"I was forever getting away from everyone in the house," the woman said. "I'm so sorry I'm late, my darling."_

_The vampire smiled. "It's quite all right. I had a little business to conclude, so ennui never had time to set in."_

_"Adelbert, how much longer must I wait to become your betrothed?"_

_"Not much longer now, my Helen." The street lamps shone above and below in the puddles. "Such things are much easier done the more money is involved, of course. How goes that?"_

_"It's almost done. I've nearly finished persuading Father that I wish to learn more about finances, so he will soon give me access to the contents of his bank box, and bore me with talk of figures and stocks while I select my dowry!" She laughed._

_He laughed with her. "My clever darling. Yes, contact me the very night you have succeeded, and bring everything you can. Come in your nightgown and barefoot if you must, for we can purchase what we need along the way as we head to the east. Once we are in my country I will make you my immortal bride." He held up both long white hands as she reached for his mouth with her own. "No, let us wait. The next time I kiss you, my sweet, it will be the eternal kiss."_

_She quivered in his arms. "Oh, if that day doesn't come soon I'll die of anticipation first!"_

_"Go home. You are doing splendidly. Finish your own share of our adventure, and send for me when you are ready."_

_"I will, my Alberto!" The woman pulled up her cloak's hood and headed back into the better-lit streets beyond the alley, vanishing from sight._

_"Splendidly," the vampire said, and dropped to lap at the dark puddles on the cobblestones. More wetness still oozed sluggishly from the torn throat of the crumpled woman deep in the shadows._

***

"My dear Watson, I trust you enjoyed your visit to the Turkish bath."

I laughed at the airy comment by my flatmate as I entered the main room. "When a man comes home smelling freshly of sandlewood soap, Holmes, one need not be the foremost deductionist in London to arrive at that conclusion."

Sherlock Holmes laughed in agreement from his chair. "Your sojourn to Northumberland Street is also proclaimed by your boots; they are tied in a manner unlike your usual style, which means that the bath attendant laced them. Your time was well-spent; you are a good deal warmer and more relaxed than you would have been from the bracing home-made article."

"Bracing is certainly one word for it." In winter bath-water, brought up in pails from the kitchen stove and emptied into the tub, chilled rapidly in the main room even near the fireplace; this made a Turkish bath much more appealing, and well worth the expense.

I poured a cup of tepid tea from the pot Mrs. Hudson had left on the table and took my own seat beside Holmes. Only then did I notice the letter he was holding, a cream-coloured paper that contrasted with the white of his long hand. "You seem to be considering a client – and judging from the paper quality a wealthy one."

Without a word Sherlock Holmes held out the missive, and I took it; the thick luxuriant feel of the paper confirmed my first impression before I noticed the crest at the top. Sir James Damery, a respectable and noteworthy member of the House of Lords. But any musing on what request from such a person would interest Sherlock Holmes flew out of my head at the first line of the letter:

_Mr. Sherlock Holmes:_

_I begin by recalling our mutual acquaintance, Miss Irene Adler, who has not been seen in England for nearly three years._

My heart threatened to leap out of my chest, pounding in fear, and spoiling the good I'd gotten from my bath.

Irene Adler; New Jersey-born adventuress, coloratura, and hunter of the inhuman denizens of the world. The captor who had held Holmes and starved him for two months to show him to me in his full monstrous nature in a misguided attempt to free me from what she had assumed was vampiric enthrallment. Ironically, she was the person most responsible for our current inseperability and unity – for my feeding Holmes my own blood out of pure love and not fear had bound him to me permanently. She had left us to each other upon seeing that Holmes would rely solely upon me for sustenance in the future, and would assail the denizens of London's underworld only as a consulting detective from then on.

"Is Sir James also a hunter?" My voice was steady; my long exposure to Holmes' world had steeled my nerves as had my experience in combat medicine.

"He would say he is retired, but no hunter truly does so. That handsome walking-stick of his hides a silver sword."

Three strokes of which would destroy my friend. "He knows of you. Will I be required to have it out with the fellow?" Duelling was an 18th-century relic in this modern age, but I had a loved one to defend.

"Good old Watson! No, he knows I am no threat to him; his reference to the hunter was his way of saying that. This business involves my _demimonde_ , or he would have contacted me without mentioning her."

Relieved, I turned my eyes back to the letter. Very little was left:

_I will call upon you at 4:30pm tomorrow to discuss the matter that troubles my employer as well as General de Merville and myself. Yours faithfully, &c._

I stood.

"Watson, he's not coming till to-morrow."

"I need to make sure my revolver is well-cleaned and loaded with lead shot." My voice was the one I used in combat. "You may deduce that Sir James means you no ill, but if a hunter is under our roof I will ensure that."

When Sir James Damery came to call the next afternoon – a tall, imposing man, impeccably dressed and leaning on the aforementioned walking stick – he gave me a long look. Without a word I pulled aside my coat to let him see my watch-fob – a silver bullet Irene Adler had once fired into my friend's flesh – and he gave a tiny nod. He shook my hand, nodded to Holmes, and took a seat. His hands never left his walking-stick, and throughout his conversation I could sense that he was acutely aware of me at all times. His guard was up too.

With no further niceties Sir James began. "Mr. Holmes, this matter of my employer's concerns a fellow who has captured General de Merville's daughter."

Holmes arched an eyebrow.

James smiled as if facing an enemy during a truce. "Yes. If this was a simple abduction by a common blackguard the General would handle the matter himself and retain the police. I would not be here. But everyone in this room is fully aware of another world of which the General knows nothing.

"The young lady's captor is a brute by the name of Adelbert Gruner."

The name pierced me to the gut, for it was familiar to me from conversations with my friend. Gruner was a vampire that had garnered a reputation even among other vampires. "That poor girl."

"Poor girl! Infuriating is a better word, Dr. Watson!" Sir James stood, tall and aristocratic even in his hunter's stance. "The bonds with which this fiend holds Miss Violet de Merville are the strongest and most terrible, for she put them on herself."

Ah. "Love," said I. "She is in love with him."

Holmes pursed his lips in a barely visible smirk. "Or believes her infatuation to be love."

Sir James shook his head. "In every other respect, Violet de Merville is intelligent, witty, highly accomplished, well-read, rich, beautiful, a wonder-woman – but all that flies out the window if her beloved Adelbert is maligned in her hearing. Every account of an unsolved murder of a young wealthy woman in his wake – so many! – is dismissed as false. She knows what he is, for he has told her so himself – making sure to paint himself as a tormented soul from one of her ghastly novels. She swears that she will be the one to stir his dead heart back to life. As if such monsters can learn to love!"

"Stranger things have happened." Holmes waved a languid hand, but his grey eyes met mine and bid me to silence when I would have angrily countered his insulting language. "But I deduce that Miss de Merville's connection with Gruner is not helped by her choice of reading material."

Our visitor groaned, his whole body slumping like a willow. "She devours the worst and vilest novels of that sort – the ones that ought rightly to be labeled as pornography and not Gothic horror."

 _Ninety percent the writer's own sexual neuroses and ten percent folklore, Watson_ , Holmes had snapped when I'd once asked about the popular literature about his kind. Stoker, Polidori, Le Fanu - they apparently held as much truth about their subject matter as boy's books about soldiers did of the real life of an Army recruit in wartime.

Holmes let out a bark of laughter. "So that is why you came to us, Sir James. You don't wish me to confront Gruner but Miss de Merville, not in my capacity as consulting detective but as a member of this selfsame fraternity, and tell her truths she will not find in her novels."

"That is exactly what I want you to do. I wouldn't have come here peacefully otherwise, Mr. Holmes," Damery said coldly. "It is a blow to my reputation that you will still exist when I leave this establishment."

"You would have left here feet-first in that case."

Damery turned and stared at my matter-of-fact reply.

I took a sip of tea, deliberately letting my shirt-cuff move back to expose my white-scarred wrist. I set down my cup and continued in the same cool tone. "I am as mortal as you, sir, and though my battlefield kills cannot compare to your own record I have slain one blood-drinker with my bare hands. Perhaps our mutual friend Miss Adler still mistrusts what we two are to each other, Sir James, but I assure both of you that I am still the only prey wanted or needed by Sherlock Holmes. He is _nothing_ but a benefactor of this city. Further, he is my most intimate friend and colleague, and should you threaten him again in our dwelling I will respond accordingly."

Sir James' look of undisguised revulsion at the pair of us was a fresh reminder that Holmes and I were as unnatural a couple in his eyes as was Oscar Wilde and his Bosie to London society, and in nearly as much danger. And yet I could not fault the man; I had run into my share of vile members of Holmes' "family" and understood Damery's mind on the subject. But it was Sir James who dropped his eyes first; I had won this small scuffle across the tea things.

Sherlock Holmes' voice was as courteous and ice-cold as my own. "We will do as you ask, Sir James. However, I fear it will be a futile endeavour. Women will love the most terrible of men, mortal and otherwise, despite all proof – and far too often to their ultimate detriment."

"We will do our best," I added. My unique position astride two worlds has let me see much. "And we appreciate how this rankles you, sir. You love Miss de Merville very much, to treat with your sworn prey."

Sir James gaped. That moment of sympathy undid his guard as wit and confrontation had not. His disgusted expression vanished, and pure grief took its place. "I… I still see her as the charming, willful child of a great man who was a second father to me. I am terrified for her, body and soul. Don't you think I'd have loaded silver into my rifle and dropped this creature myself otherwise?

"But two of this Baron's hirelings waylaid me not long ago – not mortal men but fiends of another sort, who laughed at the wounds my sword made. They gave me a thrashing till I could not return a blow. Then they told me that if I interfered in the Baron's intrigues, attempted to kill him, or even succeeded in killing him, either he or another of his blood-drinking fellows would most assuredly not kill Violet de Merville."

Holmes nodded and I shuddered. None of us in that room needed the cruel threat spelled out. It also meant that Sir James did not lean on his weapon-stick for affectation alone; he was still recovering from his beating.

"You may inform the General that we are engaged."

At Holmes' response Sir James gave him a small, curt nod as if taking leave of a treaty-signing, and was gone. When the door closed behind our visitor Holmes locked it, and turned to face me.

I gasped at what I saw. Sherlock Holmes was in his full fiendish visage – eyes glittering and icy as stars, razor-sharp teeth out – with no warning. My heart leaped as if hit with an electric shock, then pounded all the faster.

"What a delicious spectacle you made, defending my honour." Holmes' voice was a whisper. "I do so love the taste of courage."

My throat and groin ached as if for a human lover in anticipation of our union. He did not need to mesmerize me, for I had been under his spell from our first meeting at Bart's.

I closed the distance between us in moments. "A new case. You'll need your strength." I raised my forearm and pressed my wrist's vein against the batlike incisors.

Holmes never made a sound as he seized me in an unbreakable grip; I muffled my moan in his shoulder as I spilled down his throat.

***

"A bad business, Watson, very bad." Holmes rummaged through his record-books an hour later. "Adelbert Gruner is not often in England, but is nonetheless a member in good standing at the Diogenes Club."

I shuddered at the mention of Mycroft Holmes' hideous lair for the most monstrous creatures in London – a site where I had once spent a hellish night fighting to keep from being devoured or driven insane by the denizens therein – including the flesh-and-blood brother of my most intimate friend

Holmes pulled out the volume "G" in his personal reference books and rifled through it; I arose from the supper table and looked over his shoulder. "Here it is, my boy, my information on Gruner. Hum! Baron is his family's ancestral title since before Reformation; he is the sole remaining member of that line. Ah. He has only changed the style of his despoilment, Watson; he was a voracious sexual predator and a practitioner of _droit due segnieur_ well before he was turned in 1752, at the mortal age of 44. Despite this he retains a good deal of his dashing good looks from his mortal youth; a dissolute life seemed to have agreed with him."

I thought of Oscar Wilde's story about the portrait.

"Now he reaps women's wealth and then their lifeblood. Interesting; he is a collector of and an expert on Chinese pottery, and has written several books on the subject." Holmes laid a long finger against a yellow strip of paper. "I have a few broadsheets and accounts of his 'ancestors' who were notorious roues in their time; they were all actually himself, of course, for the past century or so. Not only women fell victim to him when he was mortal; he killed four men in duels."

I took a long draught of my port, fortifying my spirit as well as my depleted blood. "So this Gruner never had to change his character. Mycroft might have welcomed him into the Club in his living days. "

Holmes shoulders shook with his silent laughter. "I fear you are entirely accurate."

I glared at the proof on the pages of a brute. Proof enough for anyone willing to listen, but never enough for a woman in love.

"We will not do this alone, Watson." I might have feared that Holmes was reading my mind if I did not know his methods of thought. "I know a name or two that might put the case before Miss de Merville better than we." Holmes pulled over a blank telegraph form and began scribbling. I went into my room to unload and stow away my revolver.

When I came back down my friend was just handing the form to the page-boy with a coin to post them. "They should be here before midnight. In the meantime, dear fellow, have you dined sufficiently?"

"As well as you." I had finished half of Holmes' supper-tray as well as my own, and had drunk a carafe of water along with my port. "Do I need to know anything special before your acquaintances come here?"

"Only the usual precautions. Show no fear, of course." He gave his thin-lipped smile at my expression that clearly showed I'd expected nothing less.

I spent the intervening time reading over the Gruner information in Holmes' book and thinking over the situation; at some point I lay down for a brief siesta before our next visitors arrived (a soldier must take his sleep when he can no matter the situation, and this skill has proven invaluable in my time at 221b as well). I was awake and presentable when Holmes headed down the darkened stairs to let in his company.

The two that entered the half-gaslit room looked like a bruiser of a dockhand and a woman of the streets. Holmes was as pleasant as if welcoming our usual day-clients. "May I present Miss Kitty Winter and her friend Mr. Shinwell Johnson. This is my friend and colleague Dr. Watson, before whom you may say anything you would say to me."

I arose from my seat by the fire and greeted both. The man was about my height but very broad, and all of it muscle; his eyes glittered green in the firelight and they narrowed as he sniffed the air between us.

The woman bore the haggard look of the street-whore, but her pallor was not caused by consumption; her dark eyes were as icy as were Holmes' when he fed. "Well, Sherlock Holmes, it has been a while since anyone's seen you in the old places." Her voice bore an accent that would be at home in a fine estate, completely at odds with her bedraggled appearance befitting a flower-market near Bow Bells.

Mr. Shinwell Johnson kept staring at me and made small snorting noises. "Warm blood. You've gotten yourself a feeder-pet after all this time?"

"Nah, Porky, it's worse than that." Kitty had spoken before I could react to the term. "There's a stink to the blood like poison. In both of 'em." Kitty glared at me, looking very like Mycroft. "He loves you, doesn't he?"

I have not been a companion to a vampire for years for nothing, and I knew exactly what that word meant to their kind. I matched her icy glare. "We do share love as well as blood, Miss Winter. I'm afraid my blood has already destroyed another vampire because he could not drink it for that taint." I turned my left arm over to show the jagged scar I had acquired one Christmas.

She made a disgusted face, showing her blood-incisors. "Love. Love made me this way."

I said nothing but nodded, understanding why she was here.

Sherlock Holmes in the meantime had seated himself in his chair by the fire. He had said no word during the exchange between me and Miss Winter, but there was an expression of calm satisfaction as I ably handled the minor confrontation. I had proved to the new company that the mortal man did not need defending.

Johnson made a grunt. "Baron's been around for a while, Sherlock. Why are you making a play for him now?"

"I normally have nothing to do with my brother's club members," Holmes returned pleasantly. "As I have a reliable source of nourishment that requires no hunting, I have turned all my attention to my current fascination with mortal crime and the puzzle-solving that comes with the most unique cases. I find the practise engrossing. This particular case involves Baron Gruner. Therefore I will confront him."

Kitty Winter grinned like a crocodile. "If you're taking on that bastard Baron, I'm yours till the dust. And all I want is to get a bit of my own back."

"Excellent." Holmes' own smile was just as crocodilian. "I plan to confront his latest victim in hopes of preventing her from becoming his latest meal, or to share your fate. She loves him. If I cannot persuade her, perhaps you can."

"Stupid mortal girl. She'll be just as smitten and blind to his faults as I was, until it's too late." Winter glared into the fire, her own eyes cold steel blue even lit by the flames. "But I'll do as you say. I wouldn't wish what he did to me on the worst woman in London."

"I've found Kitty and brought her to you," Shinwell Johnson said, his voice deep and with a nasal quality to it. "Is that all you need from me?"

"By no means, Mr. Johnson. Gruner has hireling brutes to do his bidding, but they are not vampiric; they did not react to being stabbed with silver. They are not mortal or the simple act of stabbing them would have wounded or killed them. Your thoughts?"

Johnson grunted. "Think they're skins like me, don't you?"

"Skinchangers are hardly the only folk who do not fear silver, but they are the most likely suspects, considering the thrashing they administered to the woman's acquaintance. If you can find information about those fellows I'd appreciate it, Mr. Johnson."

Shinwell grunted again. "I'm on it." With one last look at Kitty, he was gone.

"Are you game for a visit to General de Merville's estate tomorrow morning?" Holmes asked. "We may be pushing a rock up a hill in vain, but we can but try."

"Can't believe I'm going out in daytime for this silly chit," Kitty growled.

With his thin-lipped smile, Holmes held out a black umbrella to his fellow vampire.

Alas, it was as Holmes had predicted and Kitty Winter feared. I have seen royalty that did not hold themselves with half the haughty bearing as Miss Violet de Merville, sitting in her parlour. She was beautiful and icy, regarded us three as intruders on her kingdom, and had already decided that anyone who spoke ill of her fiancée was a liar.

"I am quite sure my father has paid you very well for this little farce, Mr. Holmes." Her smile was nearly as cold as my friend's. "Of course a dull mind could not conceive of the notion of a woman's love changing a monster's heart for the better."

 _I am no woman_. What I actually said was "Miss de Merville, far too many women in love have thought as you did. A man does not have to drink blood at night to be monstrous. Murderers, pirates, robbers, brutes, roues have enthralled women and given them the hope that they can save those men's souls. But the women were the ones who were devoured." I might as well have sung an Italian aria for all the attention she paid my words.

Holmes produced newspaper articles and legal documents detailing Gruner's most blatant crimes, with no better result; Violet only smiled her infuriating smile and said she was very well aware of how her love had been persecuted in the past by wicked newspaper touts and superstitious people.

"Miss de Merville, do you know what I am?" Holmes finally said, face set.

"Another lost soul like Adelbert." Violet laughed. "I'm not afraid of you, you know. You'll have to find your own mortal woman to court, for I shan't change my mind about my fiancée."

"Fiancée, is he!" Kitty Winter cried, and confronted the woman. "You silly fool, I _was_ you, some years ago, enthralled by Adelbert Gruner's beauty and the romance of what he was. I'll be the one to save him, I thought – just like you. And see what he made of me!" She jutted her neck out – not the inch or two of a mortal but a full foot, like a Japanese ghost-woman. Her skin rippled and was pure white, her teeth long rat-like incisors, eyes like a dead fish.

Violet recoiled, face contorted with horror and disgust. But seconds later she held up a small wooden cross. "Adelbert warned me that jealous monstresses would try to turn me against him. He told me how to protect myself."

Kitty flinched in pure amazement back into her usual appearance. But she laughed and plucked the talisman from de Merville's hand. The vampire held the cross before Violet's frozen face. "He gave you a gun with no bullets in it, dearie. Look! This has no effect on me. Now do you see that he's setting you up?"

For just a moment, for part of a second, Violet de Merville's face showed a flicker of uncertainty and fear. "Get out," she said, her face whiter and eyes colder than Kitty Winter's. "All of you get out before I have you thrown out."

At the sight of the approaching footmen we exchanged looks and left precipitously.

In the cab Holmes struck the side with his fist in impotent anger. "Immoveable. She is for the Thames or the hunter's pike, Watson. Miss Winter, thank you for your efforts."

"O, it's not her I give a toss for." Kitty Winter glowered back at the General's estate as it receded. "It's knowing that triple-damned Gruner will get what he wants, again, and with nothing to stop him. And that high-and-mighty lady will be just another trophy in that book of his."

Holmes turned to her. For the first time since leaving Miss de Merville he looked interested in something. "Book? What book?"

"The book he keeps his women in. He showed it to me once and laughed at my reaction. I'm in there too, now." Kitty shook with rage. "He's had the book since he was alive and he's added to it since. It starts with his pornographic filth, describing a woman's flesh like he's discussing the choicest parts of a side of beef. Now it's him describing how he killed each one and how long it took and the cries they made while he did it. The worst ones are like mine – the ones he made into fledglings like him. All in his handwriting, neat and pretty as a party invitation. Photographs too – I wasn't the only fool he coaxed into posing for pictures in our drawers, or less."

Holmes' eyes shone grey with the pure joy of the bloodhound on the hunt. "This book – where does Gruner keep it?"

We both faced Holmes. Kitty spoke, and she had a tinge of excitement too. "He either keeps it on his person or locked away at whatever estate he's staying. Ugh, when he has it he flashes it about with his horrible friends."

"He'd never do that at the club, Mycroft would have him thrown out of the Diogenes for that behaviour or even having that book on his person." Holmes' voice was rapid, reassembling a case. "So it must be on his current estate in London, for he wouldn't risk having it on him whilst he makes his play for Miss de Merville." Holmes grinned like a tiger. "This book may prove the key to turning Viiolet de Merville's mind. All we need do is lay it out before her."

I'd been disgusted and horrified just hearing about that book; a true lady like Miss de Merville viewing such an obscenity could bring on a terrible shock. But better a shock to her sensibilities than her death or undeath.

"Watson?"

I grinned to match Holmes' own sly rictus. "A bit of medicinal burglary? It wouldn't be our first in a good cause."

Kitty looked at us and grinned too – showing every vicious tooth she'd gained. "I'm in on this. If he dusts me, it'll be worth it if my foot's on his face when he does it."

"Splendid." Holmes rubbed his thin white hands together. "Then Miss Winter can accompany me to Gruner's tonight to help me gain the layout of the place and possibly an opportunity to obtain the book. The Baron has a regular appointment at the Diogenes and will not be there. Watson, I prefer you to remain behind at 221b for this. Don't look like that, my boy. I am not protecting you, but holding back a card or two which I may need to play later."

I nodded, sulking a little even as I knew he was telling the truth.

Kitty gave me a foul look. "Brave, and loving? You've made a bloody _hero_ out of Sherlock Holmes, mortal."

"It was completely unintentional, Miss Winter," I couldn't help responding, and Holmes threw back his head with a laugh.

I will never obey Holmes' order to stay back again. Rising from a steady sleep and heading down to breakfast to find the headline MURDEROUS ATTACK ON SHERLOCK HOLMES glaring up from the morning paper at my plate and a red-eyed Mrs. Hudson at the doorway was an experience I wish never to repeat.

I snatched up the paper and went to our landlady.

"There was a note, Dr. Watson," she said, blinking and patting her pockets. "Here. It came with the paper."

I took the crumpled thing, noting that it was a scrap of newspaper printed in smudgy pencil. AGS SKINS FOUND US, KW RUN BUT SH FOT EM, I HELPED. IN HIS OLD HAUNT. SJ

A quick glance at the newspaper article told of a pair of burly brutes waylaying the celebrated detective on May Street until the altercation was stopped by a local constable. Several bystanders informed the policeman that the gravely wounded man would be taken to Charing Cross Hospital, and they feared for his life.

I strode into Holmes' room and reached under the bed to pull out my doctor's bag – the one that did not accompany me on my regular rounds among my living clients. I started pulling on my overcoat as I spoke to Mrs. Hudson. "I'll see if I'm needed. Possibly I can bring him home."

The noisome wharves and docks of the Limehouse district have been a wicked and dangerous place for centuries; a good nest for a night hunter seeking a brutish tar or cutthroat to slake his bloodthirst. It was full midmorning, however, so I felt little fear of meeting such folk now; I headed for a particular slum shack, the best of which in this area were unfit to house a dog let alone the wretched immigrants and street-women that occupied most of them.

A mountain of man filled the doorway when it opened at my rap, his breath coming in heavy snorts. But Shinwell Johnson stopped when he took a good look at me, still snuffing a little. "Dr. Watson. He's in here. They gave him a right beating, and one of the bastards piked 'im."

That could only mean silver, for any other weapon would leave a wound not worth mentioning. "Once or twice?"

"Once."

My heart settled down a little at the answer. One silver wound was bad, two was worse, three was fatal. "You must have saved him from getting two more."

Porky Johnson grinned. "I was in my hairsuit. Snapped his spike and tore up his leg, he'll be limping for a long time. He screamed like a horse, so that secret's out."

English wild boars were formidable fighters; Holmes had been as well-guarded as he could be, given the situation. Had I gone with Holmes I would have been battered like Sir James, or killed. None of this logical thought was a comfort now. "How did the newspaper get hold of this?"

Shinwell grunted. "Baron's boys caught us out on the street before we were at his place, that's what threw us off. Police came at the ruckus, the bodyguards ran and I just had time to change back. Told the Peeler where we'd take Mr. Holmes, and made it as bad-sounding as I could. Mr. Holmes told me, even on the ground like that."

I found a rat-gnawed candle-stump on the mantle and lit it, ascending the rickety stairs as quietly as I could.

I was not surprised to see Kitty Winter stretched out in a corner lying as if dead, as befitted a nocturnal beast at this time of day; a quick look revealed no injuries, so I turned my attention to the body on the wooden pallet.

Unlike his fellow vampire the sufferer was awake, and greeted me with a whisper. "Watson. When you write this one, you must include that I miscalculated the speed with which Violet de Merville would inform Adelbert Gruner of our visit today. He was away at the club but his bodyguards were prepared and waylaid us before we were at the estate."

I parted his shirt to examine the gaping belly puncture. A fatal wound if Sherlock Holmes had been a mortal man, but long and slow to mend without my help in his current state. I clenched my teeth.

"Don't look so scared. As Mr. Johnson will have told you it was only one stab. I've had worse, and from a better opponent."

"And for that wound I thank her, daily." I opened my bag. "Shinwell Johnson was able to do what I could not."

"I am very glad you were not there last night, as I need you wholly unknown by any of the Baron's people. I told Porky to exaggerate as much as possible to that constable, so that the fount of folklore that is the London press will keep me safe. The Baron knows that any mention of hospitals is merely to cover my nature, but the rest he will consider proof that his message has been sent, and will dismiss me as a threat."

If Gruner wished to remain in good standing at Mycroft's club he would know better than to destroy his sibling. No doubt he'd ordered his men to strike no more than two silver blows. But a brutal beating was a brutal beating. I dusted powdered lead and aconite into the wound, the basest of metals to counteract the purest of them. Poison for poison; I had turned alchemist. "Say the word and I'll shoot that damned baron myself."

A cold hand rested on my own. "My brave Watson. No, your part in this will involve neither your revolver nor your fists." Holmes stretched and smiled. "Ah, that is much better and less painful. Give me your paper."

I'd stuffed the morning edition into my medical bag on my way out the door; I handed the crumpled thing to him. Holmes ignored the screaming headline and turned the pages, quick eyes scanning the print with no difficulty in the murky room ill-lit by my one candle. "Ah! In the Society column, it reports that the Baron is returning to his ancestral home with his new fiancé. Four days from now, Watson; Miss de Merville will be lucky if he waits until they are halfway across the Channel before he drains her and consigns her to the deep. We need to stall him. We need time – not merely to retrieve his damned book but to present it to that benighted woman. A distraction. This is your part. What do you know of Chinese porcelain?"

Taken aback, I blurted the truth. "Very little."

"Then learn as much as you can in the next three days. Make yourself an expert on the subject. You became highly-versed in supernatural lore in the eight weeks I was the hunter's guest; I ask you to recreate that feat, but ten times faster. In the meantime I will contact Sir James." Holmes tried to sit up, winced, and lay back down. The wound still gaped but did not look as raw and ugly.

I patted his icy hand. "When you can move, I will take you home."

My friend nodded. "Chinese pottery, Watson. Three days. And throw red meat to the journalists waiting for you at Baker Street. Exaggerate my condition to those vultures. Gangrene, erysipelas – not expected to live the week."

I smiled despite everything. "I am a storyteller. And that last is only the truth."

Holmes shook with silent laughter and winced again.

"I will do as you say, Holmes. Now take your medicine like a good lad." I bared my wrist and picked up a clean scalpel.

Sherlock Holmes fed like an infant at the breast, and like that infant was asleep before he had finished; I bandaged myself beside the corpselike figure now in the same deep daylight torpor as Kitty Winter; his wound was already visibly closing with the treatment and fresh blood. Then, loth as I was to leave my friend's side, I rose and left. I had to learn a great deal in a very little time.

Any student who has frantically crammed for an examination at the very last minute will know how I spent those three days. With the able assistance of my friend Lomax the sublibrarian I acquired an armload of books about Chinese ceramics (one, to my bemusement, by Gruner himself; sensing a little of what Holmes had in mind, I resolved to make that tome my Bible). The rest is a blur of lukewarm teacups and flickering gas as history and names filled me and sounded like great brass bells in a Buddhist temple: Han Dynasty. Song, Tang, Xing porcelain, Heibei Province, Dehua. (I did make good on my promise and oversaw Holmes' return to 221b, deep at night to avoid the press, but did not look up from the book on Celadon I attempted to read by the cab's lantern-light, rather to my friend's amusement.)

At midday on the third day of my intense study, I returned from the library to find Holmes sitting at the table with a small box before him. "Watson, come see this and give me your opinion."

I opened the box, unwrapped a bit of silk, and gaped. Three days earlier I'd merely have said the contents were some pretty piece of blue china. "Holmes. This looks exactly like a Ming dynasty eggshell-porcelain saucer. There's only one known complete set, and it's in the Imperial Palace in Peking. This is either a clever forgery or it's priceless."

Holmes beamed. "Top marks, Watson. This is very much the latter. Sir James is not only illustrious in his own right but highly-connected; he obtained the loan of this piece for us through tomorrow. If we all play our parts right, that is all we need. Do you recall the mention in my catalog that Adelbert Gruner's second-greatest mania for collection, after women's souls, is Chinese pottery?"

Sherlock Holmes handed me a card of a Dr. Hill Barton, 369 Half Moon Street. "This is your identity tonight, Watson. You are to call on the Baron at half-eight, about the time he would go to the Diogenes. You have come upon a Ming china set that you wish to sell. You saw in the papers that he was leaving the country tomorrow and you know of his passion. Bring this, as a representative of the set. You may use your medical and military background as you wish to add credence to your story." Holmes was diplomatic enough not to mention the plague of looting done by far too many soldiers and officers in foreign lands, for all the laws forbidding the practise. "You prefer to have a neutral third party name your price – Christie or Sotheby – which will avoid any errors in miscalculating the value to the collector. This will take time."

"He might turn me down, or refuse to see me tonight."

"I think you are safe on that ground. He is the true obsessed collector."

The letter of introduction was dictated and sent off, and after satisfying myself as to Holmes' current condition (he was weak but regaining himself, his wound continuing to close – and a far cry from the "at death's very door" reports I had given to the newsmen outside earlier), that evening I set off with the saucer as Dr. Hill Barton.

The house was impressive, no mere London townhouse for this predator. The opulence and elegance of its construction and winding carriage-ways spoke of a freshly-made millionaire from gold or diamond mines with the good sense to hire a decent architect. This temporary London dwelling would pique a romantic soul's interest, if it was not quite a grim and gothic castle in Wallachia.

A footman led me to a butler, who led me to an elegant parlour; the butler walked with a hobbling gait. Display cases lined the hallway and filled the room, full of magnificent examples of ceramic art; my eyes roved over the items, recognizing the styles and in some cases the very pieces from photographs in my books.

The man himself was in the parlour already, setting a small brown vase down in the case before him. "Dr. Hill Barton. Pray sit down." His voice was deep and pleasant.

I sat with my doctor's bag on my knees and assessed the person before me. Adelbert Gruner looked like a well-kept and extremely handsome man in his mid-thirties, of medium height and build, impeccably groomed and with a little bit of a smile hiding in the corner of his mouth. It was easy to see how women would be attracted to him.

"It's the usual trouble," he laughed. "I have been arguing with myself on the wisdom of adding to my collection, and yet I already picture this set you speak of adorning my best case. Have you the saucer?"

I pulled out the box from the medical bag and set it on his desk. I watched him lift it out to examine it, and studied him further even as he studied the saucer; I took in the dark intelligent eyes focused on their task, the steady breath that many of his kind maintained to avoid calling attention to their true natures. Gruner seemed like a human; warm-toned flesh, dark eyes, an easy way about him.

Gruner set the saucer back in the box. "Genuine. And you have a set, you say? How ever did you come by such a thing?"

"Does it matter?" I made myself sound casually sly, the tone of an English officer who would not hesitate to stuff a rajah's crown into his steamer trunk. "Let us say I found it in my travels and leave it at that."

Adelbert Gruner smiled at me. "I understand that such things happen. But still there is the little matter of impossibilities. To come upon exquisite porcelain is one thing; to come upon a rarity among rarities by sheer chance? That is a stroke of luck."

I inclined my head with a little smile of my own. "We can easily let a Sotheby assayer prove the truth of my words."

"Dear dear. That will take time, and I have duties on the Continent that cannot wait."

I shrugged, a casual twitch of the red cape. "Then I will have to find another buyer. Thank you for your time." I stood.

Gruner shot a look at the box again. He was tempted.

I looked at the case where I'd first seen him. "A pity. The set would look exquisite in there. A worthy setting. But debts are debts. I need to sell – even if it's to a ham-headed squire who wants to stick some pretty china pieces on a bare shelf under his collection of deer heads." The flicker of horror on Gruner's face showed that my words had struck home. "Good evening, sir." I reached for the box on Gruner's desk.

"Before you go, Dr. Barton." Baron Gruner faced me full-on. "At least let me show you part of my collection."

"I would be honoured." I stowed the box back in my medical bag.

I tried to recall my studies as we walked past cases full of teapots and vases and saucers; when I recognised an era or artist I exclaimed at it. Internally I was thrashing over how to keep Gruner a day or two more.

"Dr. Barton?"

I looked away from an inscribed bowl to see Gruner holding two vases and smiling at me.

"Doctor, which of these was crafted in the earlier period of the Tang dynasty, and which the later?"

He knew. Fooling an actual expert had been a futile endeavour.

I turned my jolt of fear into righteous anger. "I did not come here to be quizzed like a schoolboy! I may not have your level of knowledge, but I can recognize _Song_ dynasty vases. I prefer to transact business with men who do not play games to catch out their guests and insult me to my face. Good evening, sir."

"You prefer no such thing." The dark eyes were now glassy with indifference – that terrifying emptiness of the soulless killer. The swiftness with which he had set down the pieces and now confronted me was inhuman. "You did not come to sell anything, let alone a nonexistent Ming set. You are another of Sherlock Holmes' catspaws, no doubt. And he sent a mortal man to my home alone? He's not as lost to us as his brother thinks."

Of course a cruel act would redeem Sherlock Holmes in the eyes of his fellows. I snorted at his choice of words, still Dr. Hill Barton. "Mortal man? You hold a high opinion of your own divinity."

Gruner's smile changed. His face changed. Warm flesh-tones became the pallid blue-green of a mouldering corpse; dark eyes went a lion's feral yellow; white even teeth became a mouth full of wolven fangs. It was like watching Dorian Gray and his vile portrait switch appearances. Mycroft Holmes' own transformation before my eyes had been more terrifying, but this monster so repelled me that my expression was more disgust than horror.

"Divinity? Quite the opposite." The feral fiend grinned at me. "Whatever trick Sherlock Holmes sent you here to play on me, you will find it harder to leave than to enter, Dr. Hill Barton – or should I say Dr. John Watson? I have heard of you, at the club. Your foul blood may be unfit to drink, but it will look very pretty splashed in this hallway by my men."

"Adelbert!"

The last thing I'd expected – and the Baron's as well. The joyful cry of Violet de Merville had come from the doorway. The merry tone continued. "Let us leave tonight, right now, before anyone can stop us!"

The beast turned toward the door, hand waving in the air in a summons.

"Run, Violet!" I roared. "Leave this house! Run for your life!"

Breaking glass in the house – in the direction of the Baron's study.

Gruner ran for the doorway as the footman and the butler appeared and charged at me – the butler hobbling.

I pulled out a pale white object from my doctor's bag before tossing the bag to the sofa, then spun and buried the object in the butler's chest. A horse-scream, flailing hands that became hooves for a moment, and he dropped like a stone.

I glared down the terrified footman's stare and grinned over his dead comrade. "Your turn."

A shriek from the front door, and then a scream from Violet de Merville – drowned out by the continued shrieking of the Baron.

The footman fled.

I dashed to the front door to defend the woman, leaving behind the butler sprawled and transfixed by a sharpened horse rib.

There were not one but two women in the hall. A screaming Violet de Merville stood beside Kitty Winter who looked down at the writhing, screaming Baron with a grin like my own. A vial was clutched in her hand that still dripped.

I dropped beside the thrashing Adelbert Gruner and turned him to the light.

Holy water is toxic to many inhuman creatures, as poisonous for them to touch as to drink. The stuff had splattered over Gruner's face, eating into the fiend's corpselike flesh. I wiped away what I could, but the damage was done.

Gruner looked up at the horrified Violet de Merville, and shuddered. His face contorted. But his features remained the same as before, the gangrenous skin-colour and fiend's eyes and wolf-teeth. The handsome dark-eyed romantic was gone at the first splash; the Baron's monstrous nature was now forever revealed to his victims, who would never again mistake him for a dashing, tormented soul from Gothic fiction. "My darling." His deep pleasant voice was now a harsh snarl.

Sherlock Holmes stood in the hallway from the direction of Gruner's study, a book in his hands. Ah, the broken glass; he'd taken advantage of my distraction of the Baron to burgle the safe. But neither of us had expected either of these women.

Kitty rounded on de Merville. "So love-besotted you never noticed me clinging to your carriage on the way here, did you? Well here's your dashing fiancé, wearing the last face I ever saw before he tore out my jugular. And if you don't believe me, Sherlock Holmes has some lovely reading material for your wedding voyage."

Violet de Merville shook, eyes wide.

Gruner stood, facing her. The half-step he took was halted by the press of the silver knife-tip I held to his back. His voice was still the harsh growl of the feeding monster. "My sweet – "

De Merville turned her head at the graveyard-stench that reeked from the Baron's breath. "I – I – " she gasped. "I can. I can save him."

"That's what Jeanette le Braun thought in 1789." Holmes turned a few pages. "Helen Jakers in 1841. And Gruner did not particularly care for salvation when he ravaged the Reverend Morton's 12-year-old daughter Polly in 1739, while he was still a mortal man." He held each page outward – full of the same neat handwriting that must have filled a dozen love-letters addressed to de Merville. "He found her tears 'invigorating'."

My knife-hand shook. I fought the urge to bury it in that monster's back, three times.

But there was our reward – a look of revulsion on Violet's face as she looked at Gruner, not for his outward ugliness but the inner. His spell was broken. She shook her head, not in denial but in horror, and broke into sobs.

"The footman escaped, Holmes," I said without looking away at the shaking, weeping mortal woman.

"No he didn't." Kitty had not lost her grin all night. "Listen."

The only thing we heard outside, besides the panicked whinnying of carriage horses, was loud snorting and grunting of a wild boar. And a bawling sound like a wounded sheep.

"Good old Porky," Winter said. "Easy enough to find a lamb-bone at the first butcher shop we pass and dispatch that 'un if we need to."

"You have several options, Baron Gruner," Holmes said, and his voice was ice as he faced the cowed fiend. "I can tell my mortal friend Watson to send you to Hell right now. We can free you to flee to the Diogenes Club and somehow convince my brother that I am the one that ought to be destroyed and not the fool who was duped by a bit of porcelain and his own fledgling – and as Mycroft loathes fools even more than he hates his love-turned brother, he will dine on you himself. Or you can disappear into the Austrian woods and learn to live on rat's blood beneath the earth since you will no longer be able to trap women for your sustenance."

"I very much want to send you to Hell, Baron," I said venomously.

Gruner's head dropped.

"Watson." Holmes inclined his head.

I stepped away and toward the shaking Violet, keeping my eyes and knife-blade toward Gruner.

The monster was gone in seconds.

"And there is his solo journey across the Channel," Holmes said with satisfaction, "for with the Diogenes Club on his trail he won't dare stop until he's well quit of these shores. Miss de Merville, it may be of little comfort to you now, but you are the very last woman Baron Gruner will ever terrorise."

I looked at the sobbing de Merville and despite her helping Gruner attack Holmes, my heart ached for her. "Let me know if you wish me to accompany you back to your father's house and explain as much as he needs to know. Remember that that creature has spent nearly two centuries preying on women and is an expert at manipulating natural feelings. He is at fault for all this, not you."

Violet met my eyes, red-rimmed and wet, and shook her head.

"Then go home and mourn."

With not a look at Kitty Winter, Violet de Merville strode out of the house, her back to us all.

"Watch yourselves," I spoke as the only mortal in the room. "When she recovers from her heartbreak, she will become a hunter to shame Irene Adler."

"Agreed." Holmes smiled. "Let us leave this place as soon as we can."

When I came back to the hall with my doctor's bag (the priceless saucer unharmed from its bounce on the sofa) only Holmes remained, still holding the foul book. "Kitty and Shinwell are away. The footman seems to have dragged himself off also. I sincerely doubt he will emerge to accuse you of the butler's murder, Watson, since you now know how to silence him too." Only then did Sherlock Holmes wince and put a hand to his stomach.

"Sit still. Let me look at that." I herded my friend to a nearby chair and opened my medical bag.

"A mere overexertion."

Ignoring Holmes' protest, I parted his clothing to examine the site. I nodded and rested my hand on the cold flesh around the small puncture left from the silver pike wound. "Closing without difficulty. You are quite right. Do you need to feed?"

"I'll take a dram when we're home."

"As will I. What a ghastly night's work." I glared at the splendid pottery all around us. "But Violet de Merville is saved, and Baron Adelbert Gruner has written the last page in that loathsome book you carry."

"We shan't be thanked for it."

"That she is alive to hate us for all this is our reward, Holmes. Your heart may be still, but it is as hopeless as my own."

Holmes exhaled in a dramatic sigh that held a tinge of the grave; I resolved to see that he fed when we were back in Baker Street, after I'd fortified my blood with some good brandy. "I too associate with deplorable influences on my natural ways."

I laughed at the droll tone and kissed his cheek. "Up, old man. We need to fetch a cab."

As we passed the formerly-immaculate lawn on our way to the gates (now somewhat torn up by an enraged boar battling a footman), I shook my head. "What will become of Kitty Winter now?" I wondered if she'd retained enough holy water to imbibe and end her cursed existence.

Holmes looked at me with tenderness. "We are a most dreadful influence, Watson. It seems she and Shinwell Johnson have decided to emulate our own arrangement. I smelled Shinwell's blood on her, with the same nasty taint that others smell in yours. She will not set her teeth to another again."

I gaped at him. But my heart eased as well.

"If only Violet de Merville had been truly observant," said Sherlock Holmes, "she would have seen how easy it is to tell the difference between vampiric infatuation and love, with two pairs providing an example of the latter."

***

Sir James came by the next morning to retrieve the Ming saucer. (The vile Baron's diary, its purpose concluded, now joined the rest of Sherlock Holmes' museum of keepsakes from his many cases.) He reported that Violet was secluded in her room and refusing to eat.

"In other words," said Holmes, "not drained of blood and sinking in the wake of a Channel ferry at this very moment. You're welcome."

Sir James glared at us both. "You should have killed that monster when you had the chance."

"We were hired to dissuade Violet, not destroy Gruner. We have done what you asked." I looked at him. "Speaking of 'hired'…"

Looking as if it physically pained him, Sir James Damery pulled a pouch from his pocket and set it on the table with the unmistakeable chime of gold. "From your client. The General knows nothing of this, of course; it is another who hired me on behalf of the family, an old acquaintance." He turned and left the room.

Resolving to make sure Sir James left the premises, I followed him downstairs and watched him get into a carriage marked with an odd coat-of-arms; a goat, a rampant wolf, a black double-headed eagle. Not British but German, and the family name on a scroll at the bottom. Sir James threw his cloak over the blazon, but not before I saw the letters VAN HE.

I stared as the carriage turned the corner, thinking and revising Holmes' rant. That book, I now knew, was 90 percent Stoker's sexual neuroses, five percent folklore – and five percent truth.

Shaking my head, I closed the door and walked back up to the rooms I shared with my own beloved vampire.  


**Author's Note:**

> The two visual aids provided by the mod:  
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